Orbital deployment systems and tourism

Abstract

Since ancient times, humans have left their homelands to explore and migrate to far places. Embarking on a hero’s journey is the way that renowned mythology expert Joseph Campbell describes the relocation challenge of living or working in a foreign region [1]:

“Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be one with the world.” For the expatriate does indeed dare to go outside the known boundaries, and may in the process experience a “shock” to his or her psychological construct, our perceptions of our “world” as we know it. But consider the demands on the terrestrial who goes offworld into outer space beyond gravity! Surely that is the ultimate hero’s collective voyage and adventure when we fly out of our galaxy into the island universe [2]. Through telescopes, astronomers have already preceded actual human presence, as when exoplanetary scientists from the University of Geneva discovered in 2006, a seemingly “earth-like” planet dubbed Gliese 581 c, only 20 light years away in the constellation Libra. But within the human family today, only a select and small group of people have flown into orbit.

Keywords

International Space Station European Space Agency Life Support System Deployment System Space Tourist

For information on proceedings for IDEEA ONE/TWO contact Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture, University of Houston (Houston, TX 77204), and for IDEEA THREE contact the UK’s Oxford University School of Architecture (email: dbibby@brookes.ac.uk).Google Scholar

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